The other night I had a little time before I had to pick my son up from school after his fundraiser meeting. I had spent a few minutes boning up on the lyrics to Golden Earring’s Twilight Zone because I’ve heard it twice in as many weeks, and it was always one of those songs which I had to make up my own lyrics for in parts I didn’t know. I must say that given its time of release it had some odd lyrics: “This is a madhouse, feels like being cloned/My beacon’s been moved under moon and star” I’m going to presume you had to be fairly well off your rocker to truly understand what that means.
At any rate, the name Tommy Shaw popped in my head; I haven’t the slightest idea why, but I was a big Styx fan growing up so I said what the hell and searched on YouTube. Found, as expected, a bunch of stuff (This isn’t about Tommy, per se). There were a series of videos shot on home cameras during appearances he’d made at a few Borders stores across the country to drum up some interest in his recent solo project. Of course the fans who went to see him wanted to hear old Styx stuff, not his new stuff. The really cool thing about him was he was only too happy to oblige and make the fans happy. So he played some of Man In The Wilderness and Foolin’ Yourself. The reaction of the fans was what really resonated within me.
I’d like to step into the Wayback Machine for a moment, and go back to April 4, 1990 (I had to look up the day!). Arizona State University’s Sun Devil stadium holds somewhere around 60,000 people, I think, and it was packed. People of every possible stripe were there: male, female, teens and smaller children, Native American, Asian, Latino, Black and white—and the age demographic was equally spread, though leaned toward mid-thirties or so. Paul McCartney was in town in support of his Flowers In The Dirt album. I’ve never been a huge McCartney fan, but I liked Wings and, c’mon . . . this was one of the Beatles!
There was no distinction between race, religion, or class that night. Sixty-thousand roared and sang along in an incredible kind of harmonic unison. People danced in place during songs like Can’t Buy Me Love. I’d bet a large swath of Tempe could hear every word of Hey Jude as the throng sang. It was one of the most powerful musical experiences I have ever had. For those two-plus hours we weren’t one others genetic competition, we were one unified cross section of America . . . of humanity.
In that Borders store, as Tommy Shaw sat, played, and sang Foolin’ Yourself he didn’t need to prompt the crowd at all to sing in the appropriate places. The chorus would begin “Get Up!” and the crowd would repeat, loudly “GET UP! Get back on your feet/You’re the one they can’t beat, and you know it”. The crowd fell quiet at the right beat in time for Tommy to sing “Welllllll, C’mon!” and the crowd sang “C’MON! Let’s see what you’ve got/Just take your best shot and don’t blow it/Whoa, whoa, who-oa!”
What a fantastically moving thing music is. Something that transcends our individual walls, breaks it down, to let the real human inside us free. If only for a few, brief, shining moments, we can exist in a real-life Camelot.
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